Photo supplied by Glyn Gruner

By Abby Zieverink

Municipal Election

Glyn Grüner running for mayor of Grande Prairie in municipal election

Oct 14, 2021 | 1:21 PM

Glyn Gruner is one of four mayoral candidates in Grande Prairie in the upcoming municipal election.

Gruner says his main platform is a vision of direct democracy although, he explains he would be unable to switch to direct democracy himself immediately. If elected, his goal is to represent residents in the Swan City with an indirect version of direct democracy.

He says this includes him representing the wants and requests of people in the city.

“Instead of having this 50/50 where it’s like first past the post, have it so where like an issue can change over time. So let’s say people don’t want photo radar and they vote against it,” he says.

“But six months later they realize oh no that was a mistake. With direct democracy literally overnight change their opinion because they can automatically tell the mayor or councillors that are running as direct democracy candidates what they want, so they can act right away.”

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Gruner tells EverythingGP he came up with the idea of being a direct democracy candidate because he believes one person is unable to solve problems for the whole city.

“It’s going to take basically knowing what everybody wants in order to get problems solved because right now if I was a regular politician, you’re basically just guessing what people want and hoping you pick enough issues to convince people to vote for you,” he says.

“But of course, you still need a human being deciding what to focus on and keeping control of everything, so rather than switching over to direct democracy it’s actually kind of nice that you can just put one person in as mayor to represent the people.”

“But you have to, basically trust me to tell the truth, and through my software” Gruner adds.

He says his software is still in the works, but if elected would be a service provided, and ran by himself.

“So that I would inform the council how many people voted and what they want and it’s also like, the voting system I made is really bare-boned, just because the council votes once a week, so it’s really easy because I can just send an email out and people can go to the webpage, and they can vote.”

Gruner believes it is important to give money to youth groups, and children. With that, he says he would rather residents vote on what groups are allocated money would be distributed to through his software.

“I don’t really care about picking and choosing where the money goes, so macro voting would be just like I approve a certain amount of money goes towards this cause, or unlimited even, and then people that actually care more can actually go in and pick and choose which programs they support and also keep paying attention to it as new programs come and go over the years.”

Preventing theft in Grande Prairie is also a top priority on Gruner’s platform. Gruner hopes his campaign can convince apathetic voters to go out and vote for him.

“This election will either throw me into power or give me a good indication on how to be more convincing next time around.”

Election day is October 18.

A full list of candidates and election details can be found on EverythingGP’s municipal election page.